Wednesday morning, Alberta’s wind and solar power had flatlined to next to zero, again. Coffee makers in Edmonton and Calgary were not running on wind. 

As the sun had not yet risen at 7:26 a.m. on Jan. 11, only 1 megawatt of power was being produced from solar, as is expected at this time of the winter (likely an error, as that one megawatt was reported throughout the night.) But wind power generation, which now has a nameplate capacity of 3,618 megawatts, was producing just 19 megawatts across 36 wind farms. And nearly an hour later, that number had only gone up to 26 megawatts, meaning that during morning preparations to go to work or school, Alberta’s grid got basically nothing from wind power.